


A Powerful Word

by InkSplatterM



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: mild trigger warning for mutilation, most characters will show up in later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 06:43:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3199376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSplatterM/pseuds/InkSplatterM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Adaar is now the Inqisitor, proclaimed far and wide to be the Herald of Andraste. She didn't always have the name "Sarah", once she would have been called Saarebas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Powerful Word

There was a power in words. Everyone knew that. The power of names told you what something was, what its place in the world was, how it worked. She knew her name was the place where she was born, the circumstances, what they were training her to be. But it didn’t include that she was a dreamer.

She dreamed during the day, when she should have been attending to lessons, of words swimming in her mind and attaching meaning to nothingness. She dreamed at night of black cities and words that could move mountains and shape firestorms.

Her head was in the clouds, so it was almost absently that she said a word, and created the crackling shield of fire that stopped an unstable tower from crushing her.

\-----------

A new word applied to her now: Saarebas, Dangerous Thing.

Locked in a cell while the Arvaarads and her Tamassran scurried to find out whom she had talked to, who she might have influenced unintentionally while waiting for her abilities to show.

Saarebas. An entrance into the world for demons. One who’s words would corrupt and doom them all, but still nothing more than a “thing”.

There was nothing for her to do in the cell but dream of wild places.

When they brought her out, two Arvaarads started to bind her hands behind her back, and a third brought up a thick needle and thread. The pain burst against her mouth and hot stickiness fell over her lips and onto her tongue. A word started to form in her mind. One word, repeated over and over again.

No. No, no. No, no, no, no no.

“NO!”

\------

She didn’t know how long that she ran, only that she did, and that to stop would spell the death of her dreams, the death of words.

Nothing could be worse than not being able to dream. Even if it meant having to leave all that she had known, giving up everything she held dear, she had to be able to dream.

How she escaped, she had no idea. Only that the end of her run landed her with elves, far from any sound of Qunlat.

Perhaps they were just fever dreams, but after she collapsed, she could swear that she heard words, lightly spoken with odd accents, in a language she could only just decifer.

“.. your name? What is you…”

“Saarebas… Saarebas…”

“Are you called? What is your na…”

“Saarebas” it was the only word that felt safe on her tongue and half mangled lips.

When she woke fully the ceiling over her head was a rough brown. And the mat under her back was thin, tattered, but the most comfortable thing she had ever felt for what seemed like weeks.

“Sarah, you’re up!” An elf moved closer, white hair held back with a band, holding a bowl up to her lips. “Quick, drink, drink, Sarah. We’ll find some food to spare soon. Just drink this first.”

The water was sour and left a stony aftertaste, but she wouldn’t have given it up for the world. Though she stayed silent, it didn’t seem to bother the elf, who was introduced as “Mira”. Days passed, with her own silence and Mira’s chatter. It didn’t seem to matter that she never talked back to Mira, nor to anyone else that came by. She realized that they were speaking the Tevinter language, peppered with some musical words she couldn’t place.

“Why do you call me that?”

Mira looked startled, but not unpleased the first time that she spoke. “Well, we tried to have you say your name, say anything, while you were delirious and all you would say was… sarahvas?”. The pronunciation was laughably mangled, but the word still identifiable. “So we started calling you ‘Sarah’ and it stuck.”

Sarah from Saarebas. She would have laughed, but it still hurt to smile. “… I like it.”

\-----

More awake now, Sarah realized several things. The elves came and went at set times, and they all dressed the same. Their fingers were thin, but bumpy calluses spoke of work. They all had eyes that were hard without ever sacrificing softness when they looked at each other. Every time that special softness was turned her way Sarah felt like she had received a benediction.

The dreams they had were of a simple sort, but were complicated for every simple aspect. Sarah’s dreaming touched theirs, adding brightness to the flowers in a garden that they owned, not one that they tended for someone else. The scents and taste of a bread baked with their own work for themselves tasted sweeter and more filling. The chains were gone.

With each dream and each waking look of care, Sarah knew that she couldn’t stay here. Every moment was another where she could be discovered. Another day passing was another possibility that Mira and the others could be punished for harboring her, be it by Ben-Hassrath agents or by the slaves’ master. Neither possibility was one that Sarah was going to accept.

She was Saarebas, a dangerous thing, just by being here. Magic had nothing to do with it.

Sarah made sure to hug Mira and the others before she left. Her chin fitting comfortably against all of their shoulders, despite the ganglyness that her body held; all the elves were full grown, and yet Sarah, a few inches taller than all of them, still had a ways to grow. “I’ll never forget you. Any of you.”

Mira looked like she would cry as she said, “Andraste keep you safe.”

Mira’s husband, who had fading black lines all over his face suggesting the snarled branches of a tree, pressed a small container into Sarah’s hands, saying something in that beautiful, musical language before switching back to Tevinter, “May Mythal and the Creators guide your steps and block your hunters, Sarah. You will beat them.”

Sarah left with her heart in her feet, knowing that it was all that she could do to keep them safe.

\-----

Far down the road, Sarah opened the container. Inside was red paint. Perhaps it wasn’t Vitaar, but just as good.

\-----

The first mercenary company Sarah joined laughed at her until the captain ended up with his hair being slightly charred from a stray spark. She hadn’t meant for that to happen, but since it got her to the same place, she smiled as innocently as possible.

She signed the contract in Qunlot, an oddity noticed, but left unspoken as the company’s other mage grabbed her and set to giving her at least a few pointers before Sarah could burn down the entire camp.

\------

The first time that Sarah blew up a bridge gave her the idea for a surname, a second name that everyone seemed to identify themselves by.

Adaar. A gatlock cannon.

She was Sarah Adaar, dangerous as a Qunari cannon.

\----

The company that brought Sarah to Haven was the second company she had joined. Her contract came due with the first, and she decided to see more of Thedas, taken the language and magic lessons with her. The second one was less like a family than the first, but still accepted her Qunlot signature. Though, given the way that they were eyeing the page and her, with smiles that glittered like Pride’s horns… she knew that the words above her signature, written in a plain language nothing like Qunlot or Tevinter, might not contain things she would like. Either way, they needed the lightning that she could throw, and the explosions that she could rig.

Ultimately they did not like her, she did not like them, but they all appreciated each other, and she was paid on time, whatever plans they might have had in the future.

Plans that came for not anyways, between managing to take over part of the company, and a final perishing in an explosion and a green light that burned into her hand.


End file.
